Implications of Parents’ Goals for Their Responses to Children’s Performance: An Experimental Investigation

• In Event: 1-193 - Antecedents and Consequences of Parental Praise

Integrative Statement

Background: How parents respond to children’s performance plays a role in children’s psychological functioning (e.g., Brummelman et al., 2016; Pomerantz & Kempner, 2013). The tendency for American parents to focus on children’s success—often with praise—more than do Chinese parents, who focus more on children’s failure, appears to underlie the tendency for American (vs. Chinese) children to be less prone to emotional distress (e.g., anxiety symptoms; J. Ng et al., 2018), but also may contribute to their poorer achievement (F. Ng et al., 2007). However, little is known as to what shapes parents’ responses to children’s performance.

Reflecting American cultural values, recent research indicates that American parents often hold self-worth goals for children in that they prioritize children’s self-regard; in contrast, in line with Chinese cultural values, many Chinese parents place import on children’s constant striving to improve themselves (i.e., self-improvement goals; J. Ng et al., 2018). These differences in American and Chinese parents’ goals contribute to differences in their responses (J. Ng et al., 2018). However, because the evidence is correlational, it is unclear whether parents’ goals drive their responses. Thus, we experimentally manipulated American and Chinese mothers’ goals.

Methods: Participants were 163 American and 168 Hong Kong mothers and their children (Mage=10.25 years). Half of mothers in each country were randomly assigned to the self-worth goal condition in which they read a brochure highlighting the usefulness of fostering children’s self-worth for their success. Mothers in the self-improvement goal condition read a brochure highlighting the usefulness of children striving to improve. Subsequently, mothers were told about their children’s performance on a logical reasoning task and reunited with children for 5 min; their verbal responses to children’s performance were video recorded and later coded (κs > .74; see Table 1 for coding scheme and examples). Mothers then reported on how they would respond to children’s performance on a test in school (αs > .73; see Table 1 for examples).

Results: To identify if mothers’ responses were influenced by the goals they were induced to hold, a mixed-model MANOVA was conducted with goal condition (self-worth vs. self-improvement) and country as between-participant factors and response type (success- vs. failure-focused) and measure (observer vs. mother report) as within-participant factors. There was a Goal Condition x Response Type interaction, p < .01, which was moderated by Country, p < .01: As anticipated, success-focused responses (e.g., praising children’s performance) were more common among both American and Chinese mothers in the self-worth than self-improvement goal condition (see Table 2), p < .001. Failure-focused responses (e.g., pointing out the problems children missed) were more common in the self-improvement (vs. self-worth) condition, only among American mothers, p = .05, however.

Discussion: The results suggest the effectiveness of interventions targeting parents’ self-worth and self-improvement goals. For example, helping parents to place less emphasis on children’s self-worth and more emphasis on their self-improvement may ensure that praise is not inflated, which is of import given that inflated praise can undermine children’s self-esteem (e.g., Brummelman et al., 2016).

Authors

• Janice Ng, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Florrie Ng, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva Pomerantz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author